This latest contribution to The Road to Democracy series deftly analyses commemorations and memorialisations of the 1976 uprisings in Soweto. Voices of authorities, police and veterans of the struggle are shared through collective memories, eyewitness accounts, and oral history testimonies. These voices, and the experiences of activists, participants and observers of the uprisings, provide readers with a palpable and arresting ‘truth’ more compelling than that of a dispassionate history text. This volume, the seventh in the series, postulates that history is about change at a given time: while pursuing a fragile balance between partisanship and objectivity, history is open to continuous reassessment and reappraisal, revision and re-examination, construction and reconstruction.
This volume, rooted as it is in primary evidence and archival material, rather than in abstract theories, offers readers rare insights from the voices and sometimes piecemeal memories of the students, parents and authorities who lived through those turbulent and momentous days.